<p>This is from the Bloomberg website:</p>
<p>How</a> Art History Majors Power the U.S. Economy: Virginia Postrel - Bloomberg</p>
<p>Essentially: why the push towards "practical" majors is short-sighted. I would love to hear what others think.</p>
<p>Thanks for the link! I love the piece about organic chemists, knowing as I do several gainfully underemployed (and once very well compensated) PhDs in that field, one of whom now teaches chemistry at my D’s high school.</p>
<p>Nice article but really nothing new there. A college education’s greatest benefit is really learning how to think. How to study and analyze a subject, be it art or science or ??. </p>
<p>I have always had an aptitude toward the STEM fields and so I became an engineer. I did get a good basic skill set in college but I have learned much more in my field (by orders of magnitude) after graduating. You need to in order to stay current. I thank my college eduaction for the skill to learn. </p>
<p>Study what you like to do, where your passion is. A person without a good aptitude toward the STEM areas will make a horrible engineer just as I would have been a horrible English major. When you graduate, there are all kinds of professions to go into; especially when you have the skills to be able to learn.</p>
<p>I majored in the arts and always got the question about what I was going to do after graduation. Somehow, I always knew I’d end up in a business career with no correlation to my college major. I had no real ambition of going into the arts professionally. I just enjoyed what i was doing at the time. After graduation I got my foot in the door with a company that had a strong training program and have enjoyed a great career since. I’ve run into people with similar stories all over the place. I onced worked with a dynamic CEO who was highly thought of throughout our industry - one of those guru types whose style everyone else liked to emulate. His major? Music.</p>
<p>HPuck said “Nice article but really nothing new there. A college education’s greatest benefit is really learning how to think. How to study and analyze a subject, be it art or science or ??” </p>
<p>Its not new, but I think it’s important to get this point of view out when so many are stressing the idea of getting a “practical” degree,</p>
<p>nice fluff article…disagree with most of it. I hope my D sticks with her physical therapy interest.</p>
<p>So it doesn’t jibe with your preconceived notions, geeps, but it does with mine.</p>
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<p>Well said.</p>
<p>signed, a web/database developer who had a double major in sociology and women’s studies (and not to totally date myself, but there was no “web” when I was in college)</p>
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<p>I’m glad it jibes with your preconceived notions…and I’m glad people can post differing opinions on message boards.</p>
<p>They had something different to say in another article</p>
<p>[Engineering</a> Undergrads Reap Top Salaries - Bloomberg](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>
<p>[Majors</a> and Earnings Segregated by Race and Gender - MonsterCollege?](<a href=“Page Not Found | Monster.com”>Page Not Found | Monster.com)</p>
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<p>I wonder what companies still have strong training programs for the newly minted college graduate. Didn’t we have a thread a little while back that bemoaned the fact that companies didn’t want to spend the time and money to train up their new hires anymore?</p>